Catullus | Criticism

SOURCE: "Characteristics of the New Poetry," in The Catullan Revolution, Melbourne University Press, 1959, pp. 44-69.

Below, Quinn examines the features of what he terms "the Catullan movement" in classical Roman literature, focusing upon the poetry of youth and reaction, meter and structure, and the language of Catullus and the poetae novi.

Macaulay (1800-1859) on the Emotional Power of Catullus's Poetry:

I have pretty near learned all that I like best in Catullus. He grows on me with intimacy. One thing he has—I do not know whether it belongs to him or to something in myself—but there are chords of my mind which he touches as nobody else does. The first lines of Miser Catulle; the lines to Cornificus, written evidently from a sick-bed; and part of the poem beginning Si qua recordanti, affect me more than I can explain. They always move me to tears.